Consumers crave acces to web based content on their TV
Recent research conducted by Points North Group confirms that most consumers would rather watch downloaded shows from the Internet on their TVs. Here is a quote from their press release:
"According to new survey research from Points North Group and Horowitz Associates, Inc., while 25% of Internet users are interested in watching downloaded TV shows and movies on their PCs, 38% -- 50% more -- are interested in watching that video on their TVs."
While this is all kind of obvious, the thing that is missing in this research is some sort of a description of what kind of content people are looking to get on their TV. It makes sense that purchased movies and TV shows would be accessible from TV, but what about other audiovisual content that is available on the Net? Should consumers be costrained to watching stuff from the iTunes store or from AOL? What if they want to watch NASA TV or other niche content, don't they deserve the means to do that?
So while most companies try a top down appraoch in the sense that they wish to get on board the high profile names to deliver content via the Internet to TV sets, and in the process they try to promote expensive new hardware and a locked down software environment (Intel Viiv, AMD Live, Microsoft MCE, etc.), we in TVersity think that this is kind of boring. The real opportunity here is to make ANY content from the Internet accessible from ANY device and let consumers build their own personal entertainment guide (PEG) from it. We call this the bottom up approach, in the sense that the high profile names will initially stay away from this new and open media world, and get on board only later on when they realize what they stand to loose (as they did with Podcasts). Sure our approach may be slower to appear on the surface, but it is also disruptive and as such it is bound to eventually surpass the more traditional one.
"According to new survey research from Points North Group and Horowitz Associates, Inc., while 25% of Internet users are interested in watching downloaded TV shows and movies on their PCs, 38% -- 50% more -- are interested in watching that video on their TVs."
While this is all kind of obvious, the thing that is missing in this research is some sort of a description of what kind of content people are looking to get on their TV. It makes sense that purchased movies and TV shows would be accessible from TV, but what about other audiovisual content that is available on the Net? Should consumers be costrained to watching stuff from the iTunes store or from AOL? What if they want to watch NASA TV or other niche content, don't they deserve the means to do that?
So while most companies try a top down appraoch in the sense that they wish to get on board the high profile names to deliver content via the Internet to TV sets, and in the process they try to promote expensive new hardware and a locked down software environment (Intel Viiv, AMD Live, Microsoft MCE, etc.), we in TVersity think that this is kind of boring. The real opportunity here is to make ANY content from the Internet accessible from ANY device and let consumers build their own personal entertainment guide (PEG) from it. We call this the bottom up approach, in the sense that the high profile names will initially stay away from this new and open media world, and get on board only later on when they realize what they stand to loose (as they did with Podcasts). Sure our approach may be slower to appear on the surface, but it is also disruptive and as such it is bound to eventually surpass the more traditional one.
